I have recently been in contact with a man who enjoys using true historical articles to base his roleplay scenes on. For me, there is a very important text on which I have based one of my deepest roleplay fantasies. It is not a historical text as such, but reflects the history of an alternate society. I am, of course, talking about my Orwellian fantasies. I have been thinking about these in much more detail lately.
"Another, quite different voice, a thin, cultivated voice...struck in. 'And by the way, while we are on the subject, "Here comes a candle to light you to bed, here comes a chopper to chop off your head!"' "
That moment of realisation. Of fear. Of acceptance that you have been caught, and that you have no control over what happens next.
One day, I am given a set of ideals by which a society lives. They read something like the following:
Masturbation is highly frowned upon.
A good work ethic is of great value.
A healthy body is a healthy mind.
Wholesome sexual activity is the only way forwards.... and so it goes on.
I am then left to interpret the rules myself.
I live by these guidelines as best I can for a length of time. Of course, not knowing exactly what the rules are makes them very difficult to follow. I know that I must have done something wrong somewhere along the line, and I know that, if anyone has found out, that I will be punished for it. But how could anyone have found out?
One evening, I am sitting down and relaxing in front of the TV. Out of nowhere, a voice comes over the speakers: 'Here comes a candle to light you to bed, here comes a chopper to chop off your head!' Suddenly, my front door bursts open. A man bursts through my door. Although I cannot see his face, I recognise his uniform. Thought Police. Ungood. FUCK.
I want to run, but I know that there is no point. He is armed, and, if I know anything of the Thought Police, it is that they won't have left anything to chance. I stand frozen on the spot. Unceremoniously, my wrists are cuffed behind my back and I am hooded and bundled into the back of a van.
I wake up. I am in a concrete cell. There is a toilet in the corner, and the rest of the room is empty, aside from a camera in one corner and speakers in another.
Over the speakers, I hear my name. 'Stand up. Turn around. No, the other way. Face down. Arms over your head.'
The rest, I'm afraid, is private :). Of course, I may share it with a lucky few...
Wednesday 13 February 2013
Sunday 13 January 2013
Burchill on Transgendered Women
A column from the Guardian (Author: Julie Burchill) this morning (13th Jan 2013). Absolutely appalling. My fiancee is a trans woman, and I would like to make it clear that this does not apply to her. As such, I have taken great offense to what Burchill has written. Further comments later (when I have time!).
"The brilliant writer Suzanne Moore and I go back a long way. I first met her when she was a young single mother living in a council flat; she took me out to interview me about my novel Ambition (republished by Corvus Books this spring, since you ask) for dear dead City Limits magazine. "I've got an entertaining budget of £12.50!" she said proudly. "Sod that, we're having lobster and champagne at Frederick's and I'm paying," I told her. Half a bottle of Bolly later, she looked at me with faraway eyes: "Ooo, I could get to like this…" And so she did.
"I have observed her rise to the forefront of this country's great polemicists with a whole lot of pride – and just a tiny bit of envy. I am godmother to her three brilliant, beautiful daughters. Though we differ on certain issues we will have each other's backs until the sacred cows come home.
"With this in mind, I was incredulous to read that my friend was being monstered on Twitter, to the extent that she had quit it, for supposedly picking on a minority – transsexuals. Though I imagine it to be something akin to being savaged by a dead sheep, as Denis Healey had it of Geoffrey Howe, I nevertheless felt indignant that a woman of such style and substance should be driven from her chosen mode of time-wasting by a bunch of dicks in chicks' clothing.
"To my mind – I have given cool-headed consideration to the matter – a gaggle of transsexuals telling Suzanne Moore how to write looks a lot like how I'd imagine the Black and White Minstrels telling Usain Bolt how to run would look. That rude and ridic.
"Here's what happened. In a book of essays called Red: The Waterstones Anthology, Suzanne contributed a piece about women's anger. She wrote that, among other things, women were angry about "not having the ideal body shape – that of a Brazilian transsexual". Rather than join her in decrying the idea that every broad should aim to look like an oven-ready porn star, the very vociferous transsexual lobby and their grim groupies picked on the messenger instead.
"I must say that my only experience of the trans lobby thus far was hearing about the vile way they have persecuted another of my friends, the veteran women's rights and anti-domestic violence activist Julie Bindel – picketing events where she is speaking about such minor issues as the rape of children and the trafficking of women just because she refuses to accept that their relationship with their phantom limb is the most pressing problem that women – real and imagined – are facing right now.
Similarly, Suzanne's original piece was about the real horror of the bigger picture – how the savagery of a few old Etonians is having real, ruinous effects on the lives of the weakest members of our society, many of whom happen to be women. The reaction of the trans lobby reminded me very much of those wretched inner-city kids who shoot another inner-city kid dead in a fast-food shop for not showing them enough "respect". Ignore the real enemy – they're strong and will need real effort and organisation to fight. How much easier to lash out at those who are conveniently close to hand!
But they'd rather argue over semantics. To be fair, after having one's nuts taken off (see what I did there?) by endless decades in academia, it's all most of them are fit to do. Educated beyond all common sense and honesty, it was a hoot to see the screaming mimis accuse Suze of white feminist privilege; it may have been this that made her finally respond in the subsequent salty language she employed to answer her Twitter critics: "People can just fuck off really. Cut their dicks off and be more feminist than me. Good for them."
"She, the other JB and I are part of the minority of women of working-class origin to make it in what used to be called Fleet Street and I think this partly contributes to the stand-off with the trannies. (I know that's a wrong word, but having recently discovered that their lot describe born women as 'Cis' – sounds like syph, cyst, cistern; all nasty stuff – they're lucky I'm not calling them shemales. Or shims.) We know that everything we have we got for ourselves. We have no family money, no safety net. And we are damned if we are going to be accused of being privileged by a bunch of bed-wetters in bad wigs.
"It's been noted before that cyberspace, though supposedly all new and shiny, is plagued by the age-old boredom of men telling women not to talk and threatening them with all kinds of nastiness if they persist in saying what they feel.
"The trans lobby is now saying that it wasn't so much the initial piece as Suzanne's refusal to apologise when told to that "made" them drive her from Twitter. Presumably she is meant to do this in the name of solidarity and the "struggle", though I find it very hard to imagine this mob struggling with anything apart from the English language and the concept of free speech.
"To have your cock cut off and then plead special privileges as women – above natural-born women, who don't know the meaning of suffering, apparently – is a bit like the old definition of chutzpah: the boy who killed his parents and then asked the jury for clemency on the grounds he was an orphan.
Shims, shemales, whatever you're calling yourselves these days – don't threaten or bully us lowly natural-born women, I warn you. We may not have as many lovely big swinging Phds as you, but we've experienced a lifetime of PMT and sexual harassment and many of us are now staring HRT and the menopause straight in the face – and still not flinching. Trust me, you ain't seen nothing yet. You really won't like us when we're angry."
"The brilliant writer Suzanne Moore and I go back a long way. I first met her when she was a young single mother living in a council flat; she took me out to interview me about my novel Ambition (republished by Corvus Books this spring, since you ask) for dear dead City Limits magazine. "I've got an entertaining budget of £12.50!" she said proudly. "Sod that, we're having lobster and champagne at Frederick's and I'm paying," I told her. Half a bottle of Bolly later, she looked at me with faraway eyes: "Ooo, I could get to like this…" And so she did.
"I have observed her rise to the forefront of this country's great polemicists with a whole lot of pride – and just a tiny bit of envy. I am godmother to her three brilliant, beautiful daughters. Though we differ on certain issues we will have each other's backs until the sacred cows come home.
"With this in mind, I was incredulous to read that my friend was being monstered on Twitter, to the extent that she had quit it, for supposedly picking on a minority – transsexuals. Though I imagine it to be something akin to being savaged by a dead sheep, as Denis Healey had it of Geoffrey Howe, I nevertheless felt indignant that a woman of such style and substance should be driven from her chosen mode of time-wasting by a bunch of dicks in chicks' clothing.
"To my mind – I have given cool-headed consideration to the matter – a gaggle of transsexuals telling Suzanne Moore how to write looks a lot like how I'd imagine the Black and White Minstrels telling Usain Bolt how to run would look. That rude and ridic.
"Here's what happened. In a book of essays called Red: The Waterstones Anthology, Suzanne contributed a piece about women's anger. She wrote that, among other things, women were angry about "not having the ideal body shape – that of a Brazilian transsexual". Rather than join her in decrying the idea that every broad should aim to look like an oven-ready porn star, the very vociferous transsexual lobby and their grim groupies picked on the messenger instead.
"I must say that my only experience of the trans lobby thus far was hearing about the vile way they have persecuted another of my friends, the veteran women's rights and anti-domestic violence activist Julie Bindel – picketing events where she is speaking about such minor issues as the rape of children and the trafficking of women just because she refuses to accept that their relationship with their phantom limb is the most pressing problem that women – real and imagined – are facing right now.
Similarly, Suzanne's original piece was about the real horror of the bigger picture – how the savagery of a few old Etonians is having real, ruinous effects on the lives of the weakest members of our society, many of whom happen to be women. The reaction of the trans lobby reminded me very much of those wretched inner-city kids who shoot another inner-city kid dead in a fast-food shop for not showing them enough "respect". Ignore the real enemy – they're strong and will need real effort and organisation to fight. How much easier to lash out at those who are conveniently close to hand!
But they'd rather argue over semantics. To be fair, after having one's nuts taken off (see what I did there?) by endless decades in academia, it's all most of them are fit to do. Educated beyond all common sense and honesty, it was a hoot to see the screaming mimis accuse Suze of white feminist privilege; it may have been this that made her finally respond in the subsequent salty language she employed to answer her Twitter critics: "People can just fuck off really. Cut their dicks off and be more feminist than me. Good for them."
"She, the other JB and I are part of the minority of women of working-class origin to make it in what used to be called Fleet Street and I think this partly contributes to the stand-off with the trannies. (I know that's a wrong word, but having recently discovered that their lot describe born women as 'Cis' – sounds like syph, cyst, cistern; all nasty stuff – they're lucky I'm not calling them shemales. Or shims.) We know that everything we have we got for ourselves. We have no family money, no safety net. And we are damned if we are going to be accused of being privileged by a bunch of bed-wetters in bad wigs.
"It's been noted before that cyberspace, though supposedly all new and shiny, is plagued by the age-old boredom of men telling women not to talk and threatening them with all kinds of nastiness if they persist in saying what they feel.
"The trans lobby is now saying that it wasn't so much the initial piece as Suzanne's refusal to apologise when told to that "made" them drive her from Twitter. Presumably she is meant to do this in the name of solidarity and the "struggle", though I find it very hard to imagine this mob struggling with anything apart from the English language and the concept of free speech.
"To have your cock cut off and then plead special privileges as women – above natural-born women, who don't know the meaning of suffering, apparently – is a bit like the old definition of chutzpah: the boy who killed his parents and then asked the jury for clemency on the grounds he was an orphan.
Shims, shemales, whatever you're calling yourselves these days – don't threaten or bully us lowly natural-born women, I warn you. We may not have as many lovely big swinging Phds as you, but we've experienced a lifetime of PMT and sexual harassment and many of us are now staring HRT and the menopause straight in the face – and still not flinching. Trust me, you ain't seen nothing yet. You really won't like us when we're angry."
Thursday 10 January 2013
Roleplay
I have recently been discovering the joys of roleplay with the man that the internet knows as Lord Fawcett. After our first play session back in January, I have been playing with him on a semi-regular basis for the last few months. We have now done a variety of roleplay scenes. I have been a schoolgirl twice, a prisoner once and a pupil at a Victorian reformatory once. I am finding that these characters have allowed me to submit more deeply and feel more fulfilled without having to resort to intense pain or intense violence.
Take, for example, my most recent character: Crystal 'Slippery' Rose. Upon discussing what type of roleplay we were going to try next, we came up with the idea of a prison scene. I then came up with the idea of Crystal. This is what I sent to Lord Fawcett:
"DOB: 01/05/1994
"Age: 18
"Height: 5'4''.
"Weight: 11st.
"Intelligence: MENSA top 2%.
"Description: Redhead. Aptitude for sports (e.g. running away) gives athletic build. Extremely confident and talented in storytelling.
" Crime committed: Fraud. Convicted for her part in the 'Great Botswana diamond robbery', where she used her femininity to get close to Sparky De Monte, the owner of DeCheers diamond mine. She and her team stole and exported over £2billion of what they thought were precious stones. They were apprehended by police whilst trying to dispose of £2billion pounds worth of carrots. The real diamonds are still missing, but believed to be in the hands of 'Slippery Rose'.
Also convicted for the Swiss Cheese Mine Incident (insurance fraud).
"Sentence: HMP Lowewood."
From that point on, all emails were titled 'FAO Crystal Rose', and I started to develop her character further. She allowed me to be arrogant and cocky, without ruining the play by being a brat. She allowed me to give in and accept her punishment. I had a reason for being punished. This pushed away the instinct that I have to blame myself and to subconsciously take 'play' punishments too literally. Most importantly, she gave me a way of experiencing some fantastic play without the danger of projecting the punishment onto my unrelated self confidence issues.
The play itself was truly amazing. Lord Fawcett seems to have worked out exactly how to humiliate me in the way that I like. At one point, he had me running around the garden as he whipped me. I had to wear an incredibly unflattering outfit, and underwent a strict corporal punishment routine. This was all enhanced by the small details - having my belongings placed into a cloth bag and confiscated upon my arrival, for example, or being left alone and chained into my 'cell' between punishments. I was left feeling floaty headed and fulfilled. I sense that there will be a lot more highly detail, pleasurably painful and perfectly humiliating in my future. In fact, I hope to be attending a group school roleplay event in a few weeks time. Maybe I will get around to writing that up in greater detail before it escapes my memory!
Take, for example, my most recent character: Crystal 'Slippery' Rose. Upon discussing what type of roleplay we were going to try next, we came up with the idea of a prison scene. I then came up with the idea of Crystal. This is what I sent to Lord Fawcett:
"DOB: 01/05/1994
"Age: 18
"Height: 5'4''.
"Weight: 11st.
"Intelligence: MENSA top 2%.
"Description: Redhead. Aptitude for sports (e.g. running away) gives athletic build. Extremely confident and talented in storytelling.
" Crime committed: Fraud. Convicted for her part in the 'Great Botswana diamond robbery', where she used her femininity to get close to Sparky De Monte, the owner of DeCheers diamond mine. She and her team stole and exported over £2billion of what they thought were precious stones. They were apprehended by police whilst trying to dispose of £2billion pounds worth of carrots. The real diamonds are still missing, but believed to be in the hands of 'Slippery Rose'.
Also convicted for the Swiss Cheese Mine Incident (insurance fraud).
"Sentence: HMP Lowewood."
From that point on, all emails were titled 'FAO Crystal Rose', and I started to develop her character further. She allowed me to be arrogant and cocky, without ruining the play by being a brat. She allowed me to give in and accept her punishment. I had a reason for being punished. This pushed away the instinct that I have to blame myself and to subconsciously take 'play' punishments too literally. Most importantly, she gave me a way of experiencing some fantastic play without the danger of projecting the punishment onto my unrelated self confidence issues.
The play itself was truly amazing. Lord Fawcett seems to have worked out exactly how to humiliate me in the way that I like. At one point, he had me running around the garden as he whipped me. I had to wear an incredibly unflattering outfit, and underwent a strict corporal punishment routine. This was all enhanced by the small details - having my belongings placed into a cloth bag and confiscated upon my arrival, for example, or being left alone and chained into my 'cell' between punishments. I was left feeling floaty headed and fulfilled. I sense that there will be a lot more highly detail, pleasurably painful and perfectly humiliating in my future. In fact, I hope to be attending a group school roleplay event in a few weeks time. Maybe I will get around to writing that up in greater detail before it escapes my memory!
Thursday 3 January 2013
A Small Hiatus
Although I am continuing to write, much of what I produce is being kept private for the moment for personal reasons. Please do keep popping back though, as I will still write the occasional piece. Hopefully I will be able to mass publish some posts in the near future. Many apologies.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)